The journey back to New York seemed all too brief for the two whose
lives had just been blended so unexpectedly, and every mile was filled
with a new and sweet discovery of delight in one another; and then,
when they reached the city they rushed in on Mrs. Hathaway and the
eager young Jeff like two children who had so much to tell they did not
know where to begin.
Mrs. Hathaway settled the matter by insisting on their going to dinner
immediately and leaving all explanations until afterward; and with the
servants present of course there was little that could be said about
the matter that each one had most at heart. But there was a spirit of
deep happiness in the atmosphere and one couldn’t possibly entertain
any fears under the influence of the radiant smiles that passed between
mother and daughter, husband and wife, brother and sister.
As soon as the meal was concluded the mother led them up to her private
sitting room, and closing the door she stood facing them all as half
breathless with the excitement of the moment they stood in a row before
her:
“My three dear children!” she murmured. Gordon’s eyes lit with joy and
his heart thrilled with the wonder of it all. Then the mother stepped
up to him and placing her hand on his arm led him over to the couch and
made him sit beside her, while the brother and sister sat down together
close by.
“Now, Cyril, my new son,” said she, deliberately, her eyes resting
approvingly upon his face, “you may tell me your story. I see my girl
has lost both head and heart to you and I doubt if she could tell it
connectedly.”
And while Celia and Jeff were laughing at this Gordon set about his
task of winning a mother, and incidentally an eager-eyed young brother
who was more than half committed to his cause already.
Celia watched proudly as her handsome husband took out his credentials,
and began his explanation.
“First, I must tell you who I am, and these papers will do it better
than I could. Will you look at them, please?”
He handed her a few letters and papers.
“These papers on the top show the rank and position that my father
and my grandfather held with the government and in the army. This is
a letter from the president to my father congratulating him on his
approaching marriage with my mother. That paper contains my mother’s
family tree, and the letters with it will give you an idea of the
honor in which my mother’s family was held in Washington and in
Virginia, her old home. I know these matters are not of much moment,
and say nothing whatever about what I am myself, but they are things
you would have been likely to know about my family if you had known
me all my life; and at least they will tell you that my family was
respectable.”
Mrs. Hathaway was examining the papers, and suddenly looked up
exclaiming: “My dear! My father knew your grandfather. I think I saw
him once when he came to our home in New York. It was years ago and I
was a young girl, but I remember he was a fine looking man with keen
dark eyes, and a heavy head of iron gray hair.”
She looked at Gordon keenly.
“I wonder if your eyes are not like his. It was long ago of course.”
“They used to say I looked like him. I do not remember him. He died
when I was very young.”
The mother looked up with a pleasant smile.
“Now tell me about yourself,” she said and laid a gentle hand on his.
Gordon looked down, an embarrassed flush spreading over his face.
“There’s nothing great to tell,” he said. “I’ve always tried to live
a straight true life, and I’ve never been in love with any girl
before--” he flashed a wonderful, blinding smile upon Celia.
“I was left alone in the world when quite young and have lived around
in boarding-schools and college. I’m a graduate of Harvard and I’ve
travelled a little. There was some money left from my father’s estate,
not much. I’m not rich. I’m a Secret Service man, and I love my work.
I get a good salary and was this morning promoted to the position next
in rank to my chief, so that now I shall have still more money. I shall
be able to make your daughter comfortable and give her some of the
luxuries, if not all, to which she has been accustomed.”
“My dear boy, that part is not what I am anxious about--” interrupted
the mother.
“I know,” said Gordon, “but it is a detail you have a right to be told.
I understand that you care far more what I am than how much money I can
make, and I promise you I am going to try to be all that you would want
your daughter’s husband to be. Perhaps the best thing I can say for
myself is that I love her better than my life, and I mean to make her
happiness the dearest thing in life to me.”
The mother’s look of deep understanding answered him more eloquently
than words could have done, and after a moment she spoke again.
“But I do not understand how you could have known one another and I
never have heard of you. Celia is not good at keeping things from her
mother, though the last three months she has had a sadness that I could
not fathom, and was forced to lay to her natural dread of leaving
home. She seemed so insistent upon having this marriage just as George
planned it--and I was so afraid she would regret not waiting. How could
you have known one another all this time and she never talked to me
about it, and why did George Hayne have any part whatever in it if you
two loved one another? Just how long have you known each other anyway?
Did it begin when you visited in Washington last spring, Celia?”
With dancing eyes Celia shook her head.
“No, Mamma. If I had met him then I’m sure George Hayne would never
have had anything to do with the matter, for Cyril would have known how
to help me out of my difficulty.”
“I shall have to tell you the whole story from my standpoint, and from
the beginning,” said Gordon, dreading now that the crisis was upon him,
what the outcome would be. “I have wanted you to know who and what
I was before you knew the story, that you might judge me as kindly
as possible, and know that however I may have been to blame in the
matter it was through no intention of mine. My story may sound rather
impossible. I know it will seem improbable, but it is nevertheless
true, everything that I have to tell. May I hope to be believed?”
“I think you may,” answered the mother searching his face anxiously.
“Those eyes of yours are not lying eyes.”
“Thank you,” he said simply, and then gathering all his courage he
plunged into his story.
Mrs. Hathaway was watching him with searching interest. Jeff had drawn
his chair up close and could scarcely restrain his excitement, and when
Gordon told of his commission he burst forth explosively:
“Gee! But that was a great stunt! I’d have liked to have been along
with you! You must be simply great to be trusted with a thing like
that!”
But his mother gently reproved him:
“Hush, my son, let us hear the story.”
Celia sat quietly watching her husband with pride, two bright spots of
color on her cheeks, and her hands clasping each other tightly. She was
hearing many details now that were new to her. Once more, when Gordon
mentioned the dinner at Holman’s Jeff interrupted with:
“Holman! Holman! Not J. P.? Why of course--we know him! Celia was
one of his daughter’s bridesmaids last spring! The old lynx! I always
thought he was crooked! People hint a lot of things about him--”
“Jeff, dear, let us hear the story,” again insisted his mother, and the
story continued.
Gordon had been looking down as he talked. He dreaded to see their
faces as the truth should dawn upon them, but when he had told all he
lifted honest eyes to the white-faced mother and pleaded with her:
“Indeed, indeed, I hope you will believe me, that not until they laid
your daughter’s hand in mine did I know that I was supposed to be the
bridegroom. I thought all the time her brother was the bridegroom. If I
had not been so distraught, and trying so hard to think how to escape,
I suppose I would have noticed that I was standing next to her, and
that everything was peculiar about the whole matter, but I didn’t.
And then when I suddenly knew that she and I were being married, what
should I have done? Do you think I ought to have stopped the ceremony
then and there and made a scene before all those people? What was the
right thing to do? Suppose my commission had been entirely out of the
question, and I had had no duty toward the government to keep entirely
quiet about myself, do you think I ought to have made a scene? Would
you have wanted me to for your daughter’s sake? Tell me please,” he
insisted, gently.
And while she hesitated he added:
“I did some pretty hard thinking during that first quarter of a second
that I realized what was happening, and I tell you honestly I didn’t
know what was the right thing to do. It seemed awful for her sake to
make a scene, and to tell you the truth I worshipped her from the
moment my eyes rested upon her. There was something sad and appealing
as she looked at me that seemed to pledge my very life to save her from
trouble. Tell me, do you think I ought to have stopped the ceremony
then at the first moment of my realization that I was being married?”
The mother’s face had softened as she watched him and listened to his
tender words about Celia and now she answered gently:
“I am not sure--perhaps not! It was a very grave question to face. I
don’t know that I can blame you for doing nothing. It would have been
terrible for her and us and everybody and have made it all so public.
Oh, I think you did right not to do anything publicly--perhaps--and
yet--it is terrible to me to think you have been forced to marry my
daughter in that way.”
“Please do not say forced,--_Mother_--” said Gordon laying both hands
earnestly upon hers and looking into her eyes, “I tell you one thing
that held me back from doing anything was that I so earnestly desired
that what I was passing through might be real and lasting. I have
never seen one like her before. I know that if the mistake had been
righted and she had passed out of my life I should never have felt
the same again. I am glad, glad with all my heart that she is mine,
and--Mother!--I think she is glad too!”
The mother turned toward her daughter, and Celia with starry eyes came
and knelt before them, and laid her hands in the hands of her husband,
saying with ringing voice:
“Yes, dear little Mother, I am gladder than I ever was before in my
life.”
And kneeling thus, with her husband’s arm about her, her face against
his shoulder, and both her hands clasped in his, she told her mother
about the tortures that George Hayne had put her through, until the
mother turned white with horror at what her beloved and cherished child
had been enduring, and the brother got up and stormed across the floor,
vowing vengeance on the luckless head of poor George Hayne.
Then after the mother had given her blessing to the two, and Jeff
had added an original one of his own, there was the whole story of
the eventful wedding trip to tell, which they both told by solos and
choruses until the hour grew alarmingly late and the mother suddenly
sent them all off to bed.
The next few days were both busy and happy ones for the two. They went
to the hospital and gladdened the life of the little newsboy with fruit
and toys and many promises; and they brought home a happy white dog
from his boarding place whom Jeff adopted as his own. Gordon had a
trying hour or two at court with his one-time host, the scoundrel who
had stolen the cipher message; and the thick-set man glared at him from
a cell window as he passed along the corridor of the prison whither he
had gone in search of George Hayne.
Gordon in his search for the lost bridegroom, whom for many reasons he
desired to find as soon as possible, had asked the help of one of the
men at work on the Holman case, in searching for a certain George Hayne
who needed very much to be brought to justice.
“Oh, you won’t have to search for him,” declared the man with a smile.
“He’s safely landed in prison three days ago. He was caught as neatly
as rolling off a log by the son of the man whose name he forged several
years ago. It was trust money of a big corporation and the man died in
his place in a prison cell, but the son means to see the real culprit
punished.”
And so Gordon, in the capacity of Celia’s lawyer, went to the prison
to talk with George Hayne, and that miserable man found no excuse for
his sins when the searching talk was over. Gordon did not let the man
know who he was, and merely made it understood that Celia was married,
and that if he attempted to make her any further trouble the whole
thing would be exposed and he would have to answer a grave charge of
blackmail.
The days passed rapidly, and at last the New York matter for which
Gordon’s presence was needed was finished, and he was free to sail away
with his bride. On the morning of their departure Gordon’s voice rang
out over the miles of telephone wires to his old chief in Washington:
“I am married and am just starting on my wedding trip. Don’t you want
to congratulate me?” And the old chief’s gruff voice sounded back:
“Good work, old man! Congratulations for you both. She may or may not
be the best girl in all the world; I haven’t had a chance to see yet;
but she’s a lucky girl, for she’s got _the best man I know_. Tell her
that for me! Bless you both! I’m glad she’s going with you. It won’t be
so lonesome.”
Gordon gave her the message that afternoon as they sailed straight
into the sunshine of a new and beautiful life together.
“Dear,” he said, as he arranged her steamer rug more comfortably about
her, “has it occurred to you that you are probably the only bride who
ever married the best man at her wedding?”
Celia smiled appreciatively and after a minute replied mischievously:
“I suppose every bride _thinks_ her husband is the best man.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.